The Vela
by Magnus McKay
Summary: A Rachel Miller short. When a test flight on the newly named 'Vela' comes to an abrupt and deadly stop, its up to Rachel and the only other survivor, Lt. Roxanne Decker to save both the ship and their skins as Wraith turn up right on queue.
1. Chapter 1

The bridge of the newly christened 'Vela' was dead. It's terminals fried, it's screens transmitting nothing but static. Lying amongst the pieces of broken ship interior are two women, dressed in military apparel. The blonde one stirs and slowly sits up. Rachel, as she is known as, places a shaking hand to her head and wipes away blood from across it. She sniffs hard and looks around for any other survivors. There's just one, Lt. Roxanne Decker, who had been conducting tests during the ships first flight.

Rachel gets to her unsteadily, her legs shaky. Well at least the gravity drive on the ship was still operational, that was a blessing. Whether the life support systems are still working is another thing. She picks her way through the wreckage and wires hanging from the ceiling towards the unconscious crew member. With a heave she manages to pull the sheet of metal that's covering Lt. Decker and turns her over. "Lt. Decker, Lt. Decker!" Rachel yells, trying to get a response out of the downed Lieutenant.

It takes a second for Decker to come round, her eyes flickering and her brow shifting into an annoyed frown. She swipes Rachel's hands away ideally and sits up sharply, rubbing the bridge of her nose with pinched finger and thumb. She's mostly unscathed apart from a few scraped knuckles and a small cut on her leg which has already stopped bleeding. "What the hell happened?" she asks, looking up at Rachel. Rachel leans back and sits on her heels, swiping the hair out of her face. "Hyperspace turbulence. Did you hear the engines shift pitch when we hit it and had that initial wobble before the systems crashed?" she explains.

"We should have dropped out of hyperspace when we hit it. We've blown the engines."

"Uh… yeah, my point exactly. How'd you-?"

"Do you hear any engines?"

"No."

"Then they're burnt out. Those are ion charged engines developed by an alien race that are WAY beyond our knowledge, they're practically indestructible Dr Miller. Now what are our options?"

"I don't know," Rachel glances around at the screens, "Looks like we've lost computer systems, which means no command systems which means… well to put it bluntly, no communications of any sort."

"So I can't find out if my people on this ship are safe or not?"

"That about sums it up yeah."

"Well that's no good then."

"I could try a system reboot. Ah… but no, that would mean getting to the Core Drive of this thing, I don't even know if we've vented any atmosphere."

"There's only one way to find out. Where's the Core Drive?"

"Six levels below us on the engineering deck, right in the middle of the ship. Before the engines stopped the chamber was flooded with a CO2 mix to prevent overheating of the core. I'm unsure if it's done any damage or even if it's safe to open the door to get in there without a suit."

"Work something out for me. You got a life signs detector? A tablet?"

"Somewhere."

"See if you can do a scan, work me out a safe route to get there and back." Lt. Decker heads for the door. "Hey where you going?" Rachel asks confused.

"To find me a suit."

"No, no I should go!"

"Quite frankly ma'am, if what Dr McKay said was true, you're indispensable to the Atlantis mission. And how hard can turning a computer off and on again be?"

"There's a locker with emergency suits just outside the bridge," Rachel waves her life signs detector in the air, "I'll be monitoring your life signs on this."

"You better…" mutters Decker leaving the bridge.


	2. Chapter 2

Radek frantically tries to contact the Vela again. And again, there's nothing but static coming from the radio.

"Come in Vela, I repeat, come in Vela. Dr Miller… Rachel? Lt. Decker? Anyone, come in please! Rachel, are you there?" Radek says urgently into the microphone.

Rodney is watching the long distance scanner one hand on his hip, another on his chin, rubbing his day old stubble thoughtfully. Radek curses in Czech and throws his radio across the room. Several members of the expedition team turn and glare at him, including Rodney.

"Still nothing?" Rodney asks with a frown.

"No, I can't believe this, maybe it's a glitch in the long distance scanner?"

"And how would that explain how there was some sort of energy burst and then they completely dropped off our scanners even though we should be seeing them right now? Are you sure they dropped out of hyperspace?"

"They jumped into hyperspace here section 14.2 then reappeared here ten minutes later, then there was the energy burst that was recorded by our surveillance on the Vela and she disappeared off our scanners." Radek explains.

Rodney looks at the screen for a moment, unblinking, his eyes squinted and his lips a thin line. The chance of finding a ship in a quadrant of space that large with a jumper would be hard, what made this difficult was that there were no Stargate's in space or otherwise in the area, what made it almost impossible was the fact that if communications and tracking signals were out, then any distress beacon was too. But the crew of the Vela did have ONE thing on their side… they had Rachel Miller, if anyone had a plan it'd be her.

* * *

"I haven't got a clue, I'm sorry!" Rachel whines into her earpiece with a grimace on her face. She's sat in the captains chair, hunched over her laptop with a bandage pressed to her head with one hand.

"What do you mean 'you haven't a clue', come on give me some good news, damn it!" Decker's voice crackles over the radio.

"Look, you were the one who said that it wouldn't be hard to unplug a computer and plug it back in again!"

"You didn't tell me that this thing worked with Wraith technology!"

"I'm sorry that the whole crashing out of a hyperspace window with engines on full kinda distracted me from telling you that we had to use Wraith technology! You sound just like a bloody Mac user… you never use DOS?"

There's a pause and then a choked laugh from over the radio, Rachel for a moment feels very insulted, then incredibly amused. She laughs loudly until she can hardly breath.

"Okay… okay, I'm done. The air's getting thin in here. Did you check the LS Systems?"

"That the big bank of flashy buttons?"

"Uh…" Rachel brings up the schematics on the tablet, "Yeah, those are the ones. Are all the lights in the green?"

"I wouldn't know, they're all off."

"You said flashy buttons!"

"I did have a look round before we took off Dr Miller, even if I didn't remember the exact position of every piece of hardware on this ship."

"Okay, we'll deal with that later. Stand in front of the life support and turn around. There should be a casing on the wall, that's the power lines to the computer."

At her end Roxanne popes open the casing with a piece of nearby debris. Inside is a complete mess, the drop out of hyper drive must have overloaded the main power. She frowns and pulls the tangle of wires. She was smart, she could do this, not as smart as the genius still holed up on the bridge but close enough.

"Okay, I'm in." she mutters over the radio.

There's static for a while. Then for a bit longer, then too long.

"Dr Miller? Miller!" Roxanne yells.

"Whoa, wait, what?" calls a faint voice from the other side.

"Miller, you feeling alright?"

"Tired mainly, I could sleep for a week. Okay, you're in did you say?"

"You don't go sleeping on a clothesline, I need your brain," Roxanne pauses to look at the wiring, "First things first. We need to get some air moving in here, that means life support systems need to be up and running. Miller, which wires are the life support?"

"Blue, reconnect them as best you can, the system should work on minimal power."

"Didn't you people think of having a back up?"

"Where would we put it? This isn't exactly the TARDIS, space was limited."

"These Ancients, no so much on the maximalist look were they…" Roxanne mutters as she begins to reconnect all the wires, some of which are no bigger than a piece of fishing wire.

Her wire clippers flash as she moves rhythmically through them, stripping the wire then twisting them together clumsily within the space suit. She breathes a sigh of relief as the bank of flashy lights begin to wink at her.

"Doc, life support is back up and running." she radios in.

"Keep working, we need our screens back so I can salvage some of the data and get us the hell out of here." Miller replies.

"Yes ma'am."


	3. Chapter 3

Rachel struggles to her feet and takes in a few breaths of the fresh, now circulating air. The computer screens around her begin to light up, running their start programming and prompting for a passcode. She moves to the closest terminal, her legs feeling like lead. She punches in the passcode and the screens around her spark to life, each of them showing a different aspect of the ship.

It's the scanner that catches her eye first. She moves over to it, her face set as she steps over another body. She looks at the visual representation of the ship and shakes her head. Out of the 17 members of skeleton crew only herself and Decker are registered as alive. She licks her lips slowly and switches the scanner to long distance outside of the ship.

It takes a few seconds for the ship to complete it's scan, each second that passes Rachel hopes that a Jumper is pulling near. The scan finishes and two blips appear on the screen. She smiles and gives a whoop of joy.

Decker enters the bridge, struggling to pull herself out of the emergency suit, casting her entanglements aside. She joins Rachel who is pointing at the screen, a wild grin on her face.

"We're okay, look they're sending rescue ships!" she grins.

Decker squints at the screen, a frown growing on her face.

"Dr Miller, aren't those ships far too big and moving far too fast for Puddle Jumpers?" she asks.

Rachel's face falls and she turns back to the screen. Her fingers move quickly, initiating a detailed scan of the approaching vessels. Her heart sinks.

"They're Wraith cruisers. We're… screwed." she breathes.

She sinks to her knees, holding her bruised head in her hands. Decker still has her eyes on the scanner.

"The hell I'm gonna let this happen." she mutters, rushing to a terminal across the room.

Rachel looks at her from between her fingers.

"What are you doing?" she asks, forlorn.

"Well come on, think about it, we were sent on this mission to test the ship, to test new systems. Like…" Decker turns to Rachel expectantly.

Rachel frowns deeply, racking her muddled, concussed brain for what Decker is getting at.

"Like the cloak generator…" she replies, it dawning on her at last.

"Now you're getting it." Decker replies with a slight smile.

"There's one little problem… we don't have enough power spare to boil a kettle, let alone try and cloak this entire ship."

"We don't have to."

"Explain."

* * *

Rodney's face is like thunder, his body language screaming pissed off. Col. Caldwell is calmly looking into his eyes, his arms folded, his face set.

"You are being totally unreasonable here." Rodney yells.

"I'm sorry Dr McKay, I just can't authorize it." Caldwell shakes his head.

"So, you're going to let those people die?" Rodney snaps.

"I'm only fuelled enough to get us home, I can't authorize tripping all the way round another quadrant looking for one lost ship."

"You have no idea-"

"That's enough McKay, yelling won't do any good." John says, silencing Rodney with a look.

Rodney shrinks back, leaving John to negotiate with the stubborn ass stood before him. John looks up at Caldwell, his eyes glinting with a controlled anger.

"If you can't search the quadrant, then drop off our teams in Jumpers. We can mount a search ourselves." John says, holding Caldwell in his glare.

"And how exactly would you get back?" Caldwell asks.

"We find a planet with a Gate close-by. That, or we fix the ship."

"Fix the ship?!" Rodney exclaims.

"Don't need all the systems, just to limping. If we can land the sucker we can get our people back home." John explains, giving Rodney a warning glance.

Radek barrels his way towards the small group, his eyes wild. He passes a tablet to Rodney whose eyes widen with shock as he reads.

"You've got to be kidding me… no seriously, you're pulling my leg." he bursts out.

He twists the tablet to show John and Caldwell.

"We've got Wraith in the quadrant."


	4. Chapter 4

Rachel works quickly, her had flying over the controls of the ship, whizzing back to the tablet, back to the controls. Decker has positioned herself at the scanner terminal, keeping an eye on the approaching Wraith cruisers. Her face is calm, impassive, but her eyes are screaming 'crap'.

Rachel pulls back from the controls and runs her fingers through her hair, sweeping the stray strands back from her face.

"Okay, I think I'm done." she says with an audible sigh.

Decker looks back over her shoulder.

"How d'you know this is gonna work?" she asks.

With a slight smile Rachel hit's a button. The bridge seems to shimmer for a second like looking at something through a haze, then Rachel disappears.

"Wow, that's… awesome." Decker breaths.

"I need to get a personal one of these!" Rachel's disembodied voice enthuses.

"So with this, we can increase the look of the damage on the outside of the ship?"

"Yeah, I've only done it on one side though, in case the Wraith decide to dock with us."

"Is that possible?"

"Could be they think, recently struck ship, human survivors… dinner."

"Then aren't we kinda screwed?"

"Nope, look at me… well, no you can't, but do you see? If you stand here with me, press ourselves up against the wall, keep quiet… we get out of this scrape of ours easy of lying!" Rachel exclaims, punching the button again an reappearing before Decker's eyes once more.

* * *

The F-302 bay is a whirl of activity. Inside the bay, Puddle Jumpers populate the spaces, each one of them having a final check before deployment. Rodney is running around like a headless chicken, yelling at people and cajoling reluctant scientists into the Jumpers. He boards Sheppard's Jumper and with a united hum, all the Jumpers power up.

Sheppard cloaks the Jumper as the rear door closes and Rodney takes a seat. Radek is grumbling behind him. He'd been iffy with Jumper travel after getting stuck in one with Rachel Miller with no life support and a last second rescue. Rodney throws him a look and Radek gives him a dark look from behind his glasses.

"Okay, we're ready for deployment." Sheppard radios in.

"This is Caldwell, bay doors are open, shield is down. Good luck." crackles Caldwell's voice over the radio.

Radek closes his eyes and winces to himself as the Jumper leaves the comfort of the Daedelus' bay.

The Wraith ship is almost upon them now, the smaller cruiser is circling the Vela like a hyena, checking the stricken ship out. There was a tense few minutes as the Wraith ship approached to investigate the 'damaged' side of the ship. The smaller ship backs off and the second ship moves in to dock with the Vela.


	5. Chapter 5

Rachel tenses in her corner, watching the scanner closely. Decker is stood in front of her, P90 poised. Rachel feels very inadequate with her sidearm raised, she's handled a P90 before, but in this case she had decided that discretion was the better part of valour and maybe heroics with a P90 wasn't the best course of action here. However in hindsight, how were 10 bullets going to fare against a Wraith? She'd have more luck if she threw the gun at it and hope for the best.

The door to the bridge hisses open. Three Wraith, two of them drones, stalk through and Rachel holds back the involuntary squeak that threatens to escape her lips. Decker seems fixed to the spot, her eyes wide.

Yeah, that's the reaction I had the first time I saw a Wraith in the flesh, thinks Rachel, except I had more of a visceral reaction and I think I screamed like a little girl with pigtails.

Decker is keeping herself together much better that Rachel. Then again, Decker hadn't nearly been lunch for a Wraith, had she? And she'd dealt with Gao'uld and Jaffa at the SGC.

The Wraith look around, checking the bodies for any signs of life. One of them moves very close to their hiding place and Rachel shrinks back. Decker gives her a look of uncertainty and Rachel just knits her eyebrows together.

After a final sweep of the bridge the Wraith leave. Rachel watches as they withdraw from the ship on the scanner. The Wraith Cruiser disengages from the Vela and both Decker and Rachel give a massive sigh of relief.

* * *

The Puddle Jumpers hold back, waiting for the Wraith Cruisers to move off and disappear off their scanners. Sheppard manoeuvres the Jumper closer to the Vela and Rodney gives a strangled choke when he sees the state of the ship up close, his eyes wide at the gaping hole in the side of the ship. There was no way that the ship had managed to hold atmosphere, but there's a chance that somewhere on the ship there was an air pocket and, with any luck, survivors. Rodney makes a few adjustments to the radio, tuning it into the Vela's frequency.

"Vela, this is Dr Rodney McKay, please come in." he says into the communications unit.

There's nothing but silence as a reply. Then there's an unusual crackle.

"Took you bloody long enough didn't it, McKay?" comes the reply.

The yell is unmistakably Rachel Millers. Rodney's eyes narrow into a look of annoyance. There's a beep and Rachel and Lt Decker appear on the HUD. Rachel gives a little wave and Decker a curt nod.

"How did you survive? The ship must have vented atmosphere like a colander." Rodney frowns, a hint of relief in his voice.

Rachel makes a little 'Oh' noise and disappears off screen. The ship shimmers hazily and Sheppard frowns as the ship seems to change before his eyes. The image of the gigantic hole fades and they're all greeted with the sight of a mostly undamaged ship.

"What did you do?!" Rodney exclaims, completely befuddled by what he's just seen.

Rachel sidles back into frame with a smile on her face.

"This was actually Lt Decker's idea. We didn't have enough power in reserve to keep the prototype cloak on full, not if we wanted to breathe. So, Lt Decker here had the excellent idea of reprogramming the cloak to create a hologram of a damaged ship, using minimal power by only cloaking certain areas of the ship." Rachel explains.

"How impressive." Radek mutters to Rodney who hushes him with a look.

"Nice work, Dr Miller, Lt Decker. Permission to come aboard?" Sheppard asks before Rodney can open his mouth. Rachel and Decker smile at each other.

"Permission granted, sir. Welcome to the Vela." Decker says with a salute.

* * *

Rachel feels that she could sleep for a week as Carson checks her over. Every part of her body ached and she was ever so glad that she was in a reasonably comfortable bed, on her way back to Atlantis.

"Have you got a magnet in your head, or are you just a glutton for head injuries?" he asks with a smile.

"Bit of both I think, Carson." Rachel smiles.

"You're to stay here, you understand? No getting up, no trying to fix the ship, just sleep." he says, giving her a look.

"Gotcha," Rachel says lying back in the bed, "No work, just sleep, you betcha." She closes her eyes and gives a deep sigh.

Carson smiles to himself and turns away, heading off to report to Sheppard. Rachel opens her eyes again, rolling over onto her side and grinning at Decker who has been watching the exchange with a slight smirk on her face.

"Hey, Decker, I wanted to thank you." Rachel says rolling out of her bed and approaching Decker's.

"No problem, and please, it's Roxanne." Decker replies, holding out a hand.

Rachel takes it, shaking it firmly. This was a military type she could get on with.

"Rach-"

"RACHEL," yells Carson before she can finish, "Get back in bed!"

Rachel narrows her eyes at him and pouts.

"I hate my name…" she sighs.

"Welcome to the club…" Roxanne mutters back.

As Carson forces Rachel back to bed, Rachel and Roxanne share a smile.


End file.
